John Kasich, the last of a dying breed of Republicanus moderatus, continues to claw his way through the tar pits of the presidential primary race toward the Republican nomination, despite having a zero percent chance at winning by any conventional means. The Ohio governor hopes to emerge victorious in a brokered convention, a scenario that has grown more likely as Donald Trump’s fortunes have fallen. But Kasich may never get his chance, if Trump and Ted Cruz get their way: the one thing both rivals agree on is that Kasich should be blocked from the convention ballot, preventing G.O.P. delegates from voting for him in the first place.

“Kasich shouldn’t be allowed to continue and the [Republican National Committee] shouldn't allow him to continue,” Trump told reporters in Wisconsin on Sunday. The Cruz campaign has said much the same thing, with a former campaign aide telling MSNBC that if they had their way, Kasich “will have no opportunity to even be voted on.”

Trump and Cruz might get their wish, too, thanks to an arcane rule adopted by the R.N.C.’s rules committee back in 2012 to ensure that Mitt Romney would secure the nomination. According to the rules, only candidates who have won eight or more states can get on the convention ballot, and as of now, Kasich has only won Ohio, his home state. While his strategy has been to peel as many delegates away from Cruz and Trump as possible, particularly in the Northeast, all his campaigning might be futile if he cannot get his nameon the ballot in the first place.

The rules committee technically has the power to change that rule if they’d like, but the chances of that happening seem slim, according to reporting by MSNBC’s Ari Melber. “The rules were established by people who largely are for Kasich right now— the establishment—and changing the rules in the middle of the game is quite generally understood as unfair,” Cruz supporter Morton Blackwell, who served on rules committees at the last seven national conventions, told Melber. R.N.C. chairman Reince Priebus indicated much the same Sunday on Meet the Press, telling Chuck Todd that major changes to the rules this year were “unlikely.”

Still, Trump and Cruz aren’t taking any chances. Both campaigns are maneuvering to stack the rules committee with what Trump adviser Barry Bennett calls their “hard-core delegates,” who will then vote to keep the eight-state minimum in place. “We'll be successful getting at least a majority—or supermajority,” said Bennett, who observed that such a committee would not “oppose” a rule that the two leading candidates favored.

Kasich adviser Charlie Black told Melber there was no reason to keep the previous convention rules in place, arguing that they were only being highlighted now to “discredit” their campaign. “The fact is every convention sets its own rules,” he said, which is technically true. But other arcane convention technicalities are true, too. Even if Cruz and Trump manage to keep Kasich’s name off the first few rounds of voting, the governor could reemerge on a later ballot if the majority of delegates from eight states nominate him as a write-in candidate. That’s a risky strategy, even as a backup plan. But right now, it might be the best chance Kasich’s got.